Fox host Neil Cavuto teamed up with Texas Attorney General – and Republican gubernatorial candidate - Greg Abbott to join the GOP in blaming President Obama for the problem of thousands of undocumented children coming across the border. Cavuto made like he was merely airing Abbott’s partisan view but his first question spoke volumes: “Maybe you can explain to me what’s going on here because they were just sort of dumped on us, and that seems more than an accident. What happened?”
Abbott told Cavuto, “We’re in a situation where we have hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over a multi-year period, and this is something that the president has known about, and has done absolutely nothing to try to staunch whatsoever. And so we do have a humanitarian crisis on our hands, but it’s also a human-made crisis because of the policies that have been promoted by the Obama administration that gives the impression to these people from Central America that we have open borders, and that they can come here illegally and that they will face no legal consequences because of it.”
Instead of challenging Abbott for proof of his attacks on the Obama administration, Cavuto piled on. He added, “That begs this argument that this was by design because if the kids are here, we’ve got the parents here, we’re gonna keep the kids here and therein lies the rub, right?”
What Cavuto never told the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers is how Republicans are exploiting the crisis for partisan gain. From Think Progress:
While some Republicans are lining their campaign wallets using the crisis, others are trying to blame the President Obama for not enforcing current immigration laws.
House Republicans will hold a House Judiciary Committee hearing next week titled, “An Administration Made Disaster: The South Texas Border Surge of Unaccompanied Alien Minors” to drive home that point. In an op-ed published Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that Obama’s “broader refusal to uphold our immigration laws [has] created a powerful incentive for children to cross into the United States illegally.”
In early June, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) also argued in a press release that the President was “personally responsible” for “incentivizing” unaccompanied children with the promise of “citizenship for anyone in the world who arrives illegally in the country by a certain age.” As a result, Sessions said, “President Obama is responsible for this calamity.”
Abbott told Cavuto, “The problem will persist for years unless and until the Obama administration steps up and does what the federal government is supposed to do under the United States Constitution.”
Think Progress also points out a number of steps the Obama administration is already taking to deal with the crisis. But instead of pointing that out, Cavuto tacitly validated the Republican view. He “just asked” about the Obama administration, “But what if it doesn’t want to? What if it doesn’t want to and it wants to make it seem you’re anti immigrant, not just anti illegal immigrant, that they’re trying to put you and Republicans in a corner, say that you’re callous, heartless, all of the above?”
Abbott continued, “Well, now the Obama administration has been exposed for pursuing that narrative because now Americans across the board are seeing how the lack of enforcement along the border has turned into a complete disaster. …Texas is not waiting around for the Obama administration because we’re now sending DPS (Department of Public Safety) officers to the border in a large operation to try to do a better job of securing our state border.”
Cavuto endorsed the idea: “The government won’t do it on the federal level, you guys are trying to do it on the state,” he commented.
Watch the "fair and balanced" discussion from one side only, from yesterday's Your World, below.